The 13-metre long fossil of a giant sea reptile known as a mosasaurus has been found during chalk quarrying in Maastricht.

An excavator operator at the ENCI cement factory discovered the giant teeth of the fossil creature in the shovel of his digger last Monday. ‘I saw them glistening in the morning sun,’ Carlo Brauer said in a news release.
Work in the area was stopped and paleontologists from Maastricht’s natural history museum immediately confirmed the unique find. Since then museum staff have uncovered large parts of its skull, body and tail.
Mosasaurus, which date from the end of the dinosaur era, swam in the shallow tropical seas which covered southern Limburg some 67 million years ago. Its name means lizard of the Meuse River
Four other relatively partial Mosasaurus skeletons have been found in the Netherlands. The new find will go on show in the Maastricht museum at the end of the year.